Tuesday, November 23, 2010

tempranillo

he's not coming
it is good to have wine
with a reseal-able cap
it is good to have wine.

the candles are not wasted, please
do not think they are wasted
but really, maybe you should save them
mother would say,'daughter, candles are for burning,
there are more at the store.'

suddenly the blue moonlight in the snow
reminds you of what is gone
and that he isn't coming
and that is is okay because the fennel is dry
and the wine will still taste good tomorrow.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

monday august 30th 2010

you asked me how the horses fomenting on ground apples
I said grass-sick gorging on ground apples
she said sleep I said
before the late moon rises

the melodies were too saccharine last night
anemic in the fog rose the voices of lateness
hard binging twang folks riding chiffon fog
harpooning it with fire licks and nails

ricochet. St. peter’s chain mail on display
live on webcam, though it hardly moves
on its days off. What feast can honor the
chains of a saint? murcurial lamb, hard iron wine?

I am alone like the way I think about Cuba
like a rare species of lily pad floating
fomenting, bee-less in a comb of speeches
so thick you need a field guide to Castro’s uniform, thick.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Trickle of Missed Honey

I started a fire from posters ripped from telephone poles:
Lost puppy(call him Cerberus), Jesus Saves, small barbaric child for sale,
8X11 sheets rumpling into flame like the final image of Eurydice
sucked and tunneling back down into Hell.

I set mouse traps by the sink, the oven, in the empty cupboards.
What could they possibly want from this empty place?
A trickle of missed honey, a grain of cocoa, one caraway seed.

Yellow beech leaves dance horribly outside in the smokey rain.
Dancing as if to laugh and torture the cedar boughs who stoically
accept them into their long-fingered webs, aromatic and soft.

You didn’t look back for me. I had already made it up the mine shaft.
But maybe that is our tragedy, you knew I would come.
You could feel the electric breath on your spine,
you played the tambourine beat the drum of a happy war.

Cowering, covered in soot, believing in anything bigger than me,
I wrapped a finger around your hungry talisman that bustled
And wagged in the wind that was always in your favor.

All these holes. Even failure fades out,
is eaten by the romance of time, turns to dust,
slips from your hands in strong gales.

The cadence of breath on flames makes a hollow song in the morning.
Some things are making me sick: heat, wood smoke creeping by
an open window, blighted tomatoes, torn bellows,
a pair of cracked leather gloves.

My regret is never having made you something beautiful.
Something to impress the unimpressible.
A grove of engraved trilithons laden with hand-woven silk tapestries
shouldered in by great women who offer rosehips,
cocoa, tobacco, orchids, peacocks, saffron.

My coffee is thick with grit and I remember how
I would wake up to your mouth on my ear.
Wishing now that I could spin that roving
breath into a fine warp, weave us a fine new sheet,
one we’d never get out of,
not even for coffee.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

INSOMNIA by Bei Dao

you see yourself outside your window
a lifetime's gleam in flux

gone blind out of jealousy
stars sail against the wind
beyond death's metaphor
and unfold ethical landscapes

in what is called a place of wellsprings
night finally catches up to you
that army of insomnia
salutes the flag of solitude

a nightwatchman tossing and turning
lights up that terror-blossom
a cat leaps into endless night
the dream's tail flashing once

Making Love to A Wolf

He came quietly, unexpectedly, without a howl.
There was hardly a moon. I offered him coffee.
He said he wouldn’t sleep. I offered him wine.
He licked his long white teeth. He lapped at it
from a small white porcelain dish painted
with Chinese characters.

It wasn’t the swaggering of his long coat, black-tipped and shimmering,
Or its silver tassels that made me swoon.
It was his casual approach, his diamond shaped eyes,
the monologues about the austerity of loneliness, the smell
of three-thousand nights spent nuzzling the hard brown earth.

In the morning he tussled and bayed but refused to get up.
I made eggs. I stared at the Christmas cactus until it bloomed.
I called to him but he was gone. Only a warm iridescence remained
In the sheets like abalone seen through gauze
or emerging from a heavy fog.

The eggs were bland. I drank the remaining wine
from the small porcelain dish,
Choking on the few silver hairs that floated on top.

It began to hail and I noticed all my books lay open on the floor,
some weighted with stones or jars of lemon preserves,
anything to make sure they would remain open.

On each page the word “destroy” highlighted in red.

It has been three weeks. I haven’t moved the books.
I study the pages for meaning.
I sit, stir the fire, rub my eyes, wait for a noise,
a rustling in the leaves outside.
A slow dumb ant stuck to the side of a honey jar.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

A Room for Daniel

Dusky beams through rows of small medicine bottles
placed neatly on a glass shelf in a window.
A woman constantly rearranges daffodils
in a vase, placing it in the depressed nook of a wall.
I just want to write about a woman and daffodils,
but I don’t want to infer anything by mentioning them together.
You may think she has a reason, an obsession, a compulsion
to arrange them, rearrange them, place them in that nook.
But that is not what I mean.
I just want yellow, frilled horn petals, lush green stems
diffused by cool water and a cheap glass vase.

Maybe I want her to be wearing a small felt hat
and have wavy hair, a curl laying flat on a cheek near the lobe
of a prim ear. But maybe that is really too much.

The smell is not good here no matter how prim an ear may make me feel
or a vase of daffodils. It smells like soft animals who have overslept
And forgotten to breath. It reminds me of nothing.

I want to relate this to you, to how I feel now.
But the air smells like dust and hollow rooms appear,
books, decanters, instruments, plates and lamps you’ve chosen
that remind me of your mother: porcelain, arabesque, breakable.

It is all blown out and amplified echoing off gilt walls
The tin ceiling smeared with the faces of intoxicated cherubim
mawkish and proud, partially lost under plaster and residues.

So pretty, a small hard face, taught skin wrapped, like a greased doll
so pretty in the sun. I wore dresses for you, wanted to be pretty
wanted people to think “how pretty she is,
how lucky he is to have such prettiness by his side.”
I imagine leeches, bruises, razor wire, hot iron, raw meat
(the nightmares of childhood)
right where the beauty shines out the most,
right at the cheekbone.

I want to teach myself to fear every hand, every posture,
every movement of a man after my neck with a cane from the curtains.
It is disgusting how I gesticulate on this stage.
Coiffing my hair like I should be staining my lips
And wearing satin negligee.
Like I am a vessel from the place
Where all boys disembark to where they end up.

The woman rearranges daffodils,
brings me a glass of cool water with vinegar
although she knows no one will ever drink it.
It is a matter of habit, of what is expected.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Letter To My Younger Nipples

It was like this:
two white arms, pudgy and compact, bursting
out of lacy pink puffed chiffon sleeves.
legs crossed at the ankles, pigeon-toed.

I would like to say here something like, widget or gizmo or cheez whiz
But I am too old now.

Shit, I say, little girls really do wear pink bows in their hair.
They wear pink plastic beaded necklaces with jumping goat pendants
at their pulsating center, bounding landscapes of musky peach blossom,
drowsy feathered eyelashes batting with foreshadowing indifference, idiocy.

My nipples, I swear, by the fluted bird song that rings nightly before dusk
(that warbling incandescent dulcimer bird of mystery!)
that they are different.
another color altogether, faintly smelling of celtic sea-salt or dry bones.
They used to smell like wet iron! Fuschia! Electric!
Now it is all flaxen, muted, foreign.

I swear by the river at night.
I can smell them.
Maybe they are out there,
by the waterfall suddenly swollen,
maybe they are out there
pressed up against a pair of cold knees
humming to a copse of stone and poplar
awaiting nothing - imaginary, safe, untouchable
carelessly listening to the coyotes love song.
Cold rubies, a word to you:

No hand is there
No devil but the devil in you
Be not awake to the tiny hearts hung there
Cherried, sparked, igniting reveries in future mouths.

Thursday, July 29, 2010

A Cheese Thing: Reflections on the Vermont Cheese Festival

Today July 28th, 2010

I have always wanted to write a daily log. I did for a while, but it made my life seem utterly uneventful and repetitive. My job can either be described as a zen-like meditation on the daily tasks of a small goat dairy or a futile study on the development of carpal tunnel. I love my job, I love my boss, I get paid a decent wage, I am never expected to exert myself in a way that might make me feel used or unequal to the person who tells me what to do. But rarely do I really feel, while I am standing on a cement floor, at a stainless double sink, in my chewed-up,ground-score Dansko’s, washing 180 plastic pyramid-shaped cheese forms with a bottle brush in some Dairy-Do, that what I am doing is appreciated, admired, even romanticized by some people.

Then comes an event like the Vermont Cheese festival that was held this year on Sunday July 25th, 2010 at Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, VT. Laini Fondiller, my boss, owner and legendary cheese-maker of Lazy Lady Farm in Westfield, VT, asked me a few months ago if I could do it for her. She said, “You know how busy Sundays are around here.” Well actually I don’t because I have the leisure of weekends off, unlike Laini, but I know when I come in on Monday and there is more cheese in the curing room, or in the cave, that Sunday must be a busy day of cheese making. Of course I said I would go. In fact I was honored. I am very proud to work for Laini and proud of the cheese and meat products we make.

All I needed was a second person to help me for the day. I could think of no one more organized or sociable than my own mother and she was delighted by the idea. I figured we needed was some cheese, some flowers, a tablecloth and a good nights sleep before the day of the event that started at 9 a.m. The day before my mom and I went kayaking on Lake Champlain and then went to bed early. Little did we know…

I had never before, in my almost 7 years of living in Vermont, been to Shelburne Farms. I have heard from everyone and their cousin that it is beautiful and that is all I’ve ever heard. What is it though? A Farm? A pretty thing to look at? I am still slightly confused about this although now I know they make cheese and wine and yes,it is beautiful! It was one of those Vermont summer days that start cloudy, get sunny, get windy, make you think its going to storm, then trail off into an orgiastic Van Gogh sunset of salmon, lilac, Great Heron gray thunderheads that bleed into the humid dark night.

We set up around 8:45 a.m. Thankfully we were right next to a coffee vendor. At first it all seemed unassuming, everyone was somewhat hushed, looking confused or simply tired. I pulled out the first wheel from the cooler. Mixed Emotions was the only kind of cheese we brought thinking it would be easier, simplified, focused. It is an un-pasteurized goat and Jersey cow cream mix about 8 inches in radius, 2-3 inch tall tomme-style cheese. It is a washed curd natural rind cheese that is aged, by FDA regulation of course, for 60 days in one of our geo-thermal caves. Natural rind means simply that instead of adding a mold to the cheese at the point of culture, the cheese forms its rind using whatever molds present in the cave. This process is one of the highlights of the aging process. Watching that bright whitish-yellow virgin cheese gather to it all these crazy-colored (brown, red, blue, beige, white), various textured(dusty, puffy, wet) and always changing molds is like watching a mini ecosystem drama. One mold will start to take over until the humidity changes and then another will battle its way to the top.

All of the batches made so far of the Mixed emotions look entirely different. The first ones of the year, the ones we brought to the festival, looked to me like the surface of a strange celestial body. Maybe an undiscovered moon of Jupiter?

Now, someone who is not a fan of farmstead cheese, or goat cheese, or cheese at all might look at this thing and think, ‘there is no way in hell I am putting that in my mouth,’ but thankfully, when you are at a cheese festival in Vermont, nobody has any inhibitions when it comes to funky looking cheese, in fact I think some people sought out the weirdest looking ones thinking they might be the tastiest. And this cheese is tasty.
Some paraphrased quotes about the cheese are due:
“This cheese is unbelievable.” Ten-year old boy.
“This cheese makes the whole trip worth it.” Guy from outta state.
“This is the best cheese at the whole festival.” More than one person.
“I’ll take a whole wheel.” Guy who really liked it.

I came to the event totally unprepared to sell cheese; no paper, no tape, no change. By the time the third person asked if they could buy some I decided to run around and barter a piece of cheese for some paper. The nice lady at Cobb Hill farm helped out and we got a volunteer to get us some tape. I sold ¼ lbs for 5 dollars, probably a steal, but it was better than nothing. By the end of the day, 5 wheels later, it was gone, I was totally pooped, dehydrated, full of cheese and ready to pass out. There were a few hectic moments where I regrettably yelled at my mom, but she realized I was just stressed. So many questions to answer. I was particularly excited when a nice gal from NPR interviewed me for the program Living on Earth. (If anyone knows Laini, they well know that NPR/VPR is on all day at the farm.)

Still, 4 days later, I don’t have my voice back but I do have a lot of cheese in my fridge.
It was so great to gab with other cheese-makers from the state, people who I can really understand and who can really understand me! All of the compliments surprised me, then overwhelmed me then I think I let it go to my head a little but from the beginning I think Laini has tried to keep it real, keep it humble and to never allow the mentality of “bigger, faster, better” get in the way of taste and authenticity and I always have felt the same.

Yes, we could make more cheese, we could get a bigger vat, expand the cheese room, build even more caves. We could actually produce the amount of cheese that is demanded by the many distributors and mongers I met with at the festival but, why? What would it prove? There would just be more work, more employees, more fuss and less fine-tuning of the thing that really matters: the art and science that is farmstead goat cheese.

A good thing is good until it isn’t and usually when it isn’t it is because there is a glut, a surplus, a corporate logo or even a mascot meandering the streets of NYC. You will not find me dressed up as a milk-maid, with a wedge of fake yellow cheese on my head, or sporting a goat costume to sell this product. I will be in the cheese room doing the best marketing ploy I know of: working diligently to perfect the ongoing slow food process of cheese making the old fashioned way.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Take Me Down Little Suzie

I do not write the rivers nightly
And I have heard the wind in the wild rice
that once grew here.
When I was younger wild rice meant brown, long, unhusked
Wild, brown, unhusked…
Now, wild brown men run longly through my dreams
Uncircumcised, unflinching, callous feet on hard packed earth
Claiming this is not a nightmare!

I have yet to see the devils face
Though I have read its description on the blue plastic wall
Of a port-o-potty on the side of the highway in Jersey;
Black will be the color
Mange and ruddy the skin
Like a burnt slice of bologna
Cancerous mouth in the shape of
Angel-Of-Death mushroom caps.


I thought the last line was particularly striking and
a rash on the skin of a childhood meat?
That is the devil’s face?

The devil no longer wakes at the gasps of lovers,
entrenched, steaming, branded
Only the cringing futile whimpers of the lied-to, shit-on, the amorphous
creatures of sadness.

Dacryorrhea: n. excessive flow of tears.


Why is it that we are shapeless when we are sad?
Why are there strings sewn to each finger-end,
a noose hovering like a mosquito over the nightshapes, the lampshade?

The crucifix doesn’t help,
Nor that it is Bloomsday,
Nor that I am drinking.

Write something happy.
I think I was technically…I am already avoiding the truth…
I was ruined when I was 14. Back then we called it…
Well we never actually named the beast, we didn’t want it to
come back for more
scraps and bones, offal and ripped muslin.


Nowadays someone misspeaks broccoli rabe,
and the animals, incestuous, ancestral
Come loping back through the breezeless spaces
to haunt the poor-houses of memory.

Old me, listen: I wont forget to put roses on your grave.
New me, listen: when will you forget the old me?

Mary Oliver might say something here like;
I wrote a poem in the river, NO, I wrote a poem the shape of a river,
NO simply,I write the river and nightly it repays me with static song.

I wanted to tell you that I am the woman in the painting,
That I too have perfectly round breasts when laying on red
cotton-weave sheets embroidered with endless gilded patterns,
the semen of ten-thousand barbaric haberdasher lovers!
The glow of candlelight in pin-strewn-rooms.

One day I will set myself on fire
And the end credits will go on forever.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Enough About Us and the Booming Nothing

I.

We became so poor
We started to boil the cotton balls
Then we had nothing to block our ears
From the howling of our bellies, the
Cries fanning the burning bellows
Of those empty hollows.

‘This is just how it is,’ they told us
When we first arrived.
‘This is a poor place, don’t come here.’
But we had no choice
It was here or death.
At least here we are only starving.
Starving but not dead.

Not even a goat will eat from these pastures
And there is no shit even for the flies
And a great booming silence echoes
Off the nothing, or maybe it is only that our
Ears have gone to seed without soil.

We try to speak if possible
And only of matters of the heart
Or dreams, or spirits, ethereal planes,
Planetary matters and philosophy.
We thought once about eating our books
But once they are eaten you can never eat them again
Whereas, if un-eaten, they can be reread
Infinitely, which is like food.
So we ate the furniture instead.
Comfort knows no place here.

The mice have all run away with their love-affairs
And the foxes run wild on the road
Stealing our momentary glances,
Taking with them the possibility of spring.

We built a hut once totally out of hairpins.
We asked for rain and sacrificed the pin hut
To some fake gods we made up.
They took the pins gladly
But we never got any rain.

In the afternoons we dip our feet
Into the mouth of the dry river delta
Dreaming of silt, thousands of pounds
Of raw draining water, water that builds
Islands, water that tempts a thirsty mouth,
Water that moves like women who once washed
Their husband’s linen shirts in it…

Sometimes the dry air, dusty, sun-beamed, in waves,
Reminds us of the way water felt.
But enough about us.

part II coming soon, or maybe never...

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Spelunking

At first the cave was an appealing even romantic symbol of introspection. Underground I thought maybe I could hear the heartbeat of the earth or some such hippie bullshit but after about 10 minutes, 3 hours, days, weeks, months of spending time in there, in that 20 ft. by 8 ft. geo-thermal, concrete, catacomb I realized that not only is it chilly, the air close and wet but that even the minutest sound reverberates off the domed ceiling and comes backs to you changed - in unearthly waves.

'I will be alone,' I thought naively, 'with time to think!'

Instead I realized that while tending to my daily cheese duties (brushing, washing, rubbing,schlepping, rack-cleaning, staring off into space (concrete though it is)) that I breathed more shallow, abstained from making any loud or even subtle noise, tried to hide from the cave whilst inside the cave! What doom did I think awaited me at the end of that dead-end tunnel?

I became to dislike the cave. Complained to myself when I had to perform my cheese duties down in there. The romance slowly waned.

But yesterday, oh glorious yesterday! I decided that instead of pretending to the cave that I was not there I would make myself known. I was going to sing in the cave.
Singing for me is often the one truly blissful part of my day. I forget everything when I sing, I go into a trance, sometimes I close my eyes, sometimes tears come out without my intention, I sink into a realm pure vibration, harmony, soul (and apparently total cheesiness, puns not formerly intended)...this is why it has always been so hard for me to sing in front of people. It is the closest thing I can relate to a religious experience.

But singing in the cave...this is beyond religious. It is like stepping into an ocean of tragic harmony. Concrete-reverb-doomed melodies pour around you like a swarm of cluster flies. No matter how hard you try to sing a happy note, it always boomerangs back half-flatted, warbling like the unluckiest of loons. It is awesome. I never liked happy songs in major keys anyway. I can sing all the songs nobody wants to hear, the songs of regret, the dirges of the heart, the songs that make you want to jump into a river and drown.

The first song I ever sang down there was Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene." The cheese liked that one so much that I now use it as the fail safe encore. I once had a long-term resident spider but I think I sang it to death or maybe inhaled it whilst preparing for a long high note. When at my greatest loss for new haunting melodies I revert to humming "Greensleeves" or some distant memory of Stravinsky, Debussy or Shostakovitch. The most fitting songs though, always seem to be that of religious demeanor or inquiry or those of the most vile and uncomely human behavior...I guess those things go hand in hand.

The point is that I do not so much loathe the advent of working in the cave anymore rather, I can't wait to haunt and be haunted down there, especially when the lights suddenly fail and the whole veil of reality is temporarily lifted.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Thunderstorm Desire

I. window mesmerizes

Outside a man builds a fire
as a storm wind breaks the calm
of the spring trees, the silk in the window
blowing like a dream in an undertow.

Like waiting for a lover I sit by the open window
thunder sounding like the opening of a familiar door
rain stinging through the screen paints the inner glass pane
and all is obscured, the hollow sound of it on the tin roof

reminds me of the wine I’ve been waiting for,
the desire for an open window on a winter night
for hair to splay in small ringlets about my face, any face,
quivering, like sleeping eyelids, in a sudden breeze.

Smoke and dust beaten down into the road
a velvet hat falls from its nail on the wall
I think of how I loved you once;
a hot night in July, asking to stop,
not wanting to miss even one golden streak
of electric summer lightning.
Only now the birches and poplars obscure the sky
and the solemn black dancers in the branches
distract me.

II. distraction

Some days I can’t see the road and I imagine instead
a great veranda looking out onto some Tolstoy-esque
meadow, a dell of rare trees, an orchard fenced by willow gates
where my only daily tasks were to play over and over the Moonlight Sonata,
and to kiss the neck of my nurse-maid, fan myself at noon
on a bench with a bowl of cherries and cream beginning to curdle in the heat.

III. coming to

May! you and I are older now…how can you still deny the death of March?
Languid you may be, steeped in fluid dreams of thunderstorms and dandelions
but a heavy delirium weighs upon us, intoxicated in your fragrant memory,

(Hiding in fields of tall grass, gathering night crawlers at midnight with a full moon,forging the river, slippery rocks underfoot, holding a breath forever)

And sunken into breathless stupor the wind dies.
Nothing having landed where it ought to lay
we wrap out hearts in wax-paper and pretend
we are not missing.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Explanations

Due to my lack of programming savvy I have created this blog in lieu of my other supposedly more fancy blog which I can hopefully switch over to someday when they put everything in laymens terms. For now this is it. A mix of poetry, my daily misguided explorations and boring lists of what I have done on any given day at the goat farm I work at.

Why I should Move to New York City

This sucks
Everyone is comparing their penis size
And licking each others assholes
And making sure small sections
Of their nipples are showing
And all I get is this white page
Like a filthy widow in a blizzard.

A spider in a cave collecting dew.

I wanted to grab all those close cropped crotches
But I was too worried about them seeing
The little hairs around my nipples.
I could pluck them out,
But I like them actually.
Some things you gotta keep for yourself
Even if they embarrass you,
Like ugly boyfriends or alcoholic mothers or abusive stepfathers or dead uncles or pedophilic priests (shiny hats and scarves).

Neat little packages dressed up as bombs.

Nothing is real here or there
I should be listening to music
But a lousy dream burst my eardrums
When I was napping.

Fiddleheads unraveling like sloths¾
Vogue dancers in peach sleeves.

Starting the fire on an April evening
The dog asleep in a plastic box
Nuzzling with the ottoman.

So there are trees!
Their song is hushed and watery like
A diving-bell Wurlitzer
Tres mujeres en las piazzas del agua oscuro
Pretending to be trees!

Leading me there, my mother scrapes together
Two mandibles, teeth rattling, baby bones, bones of the future.
Will she make me wear them again?
I am so overgrown.
I even drink neat whiskey, wear bras when necessary,
Refill the butter dishes of memory.

The fabric of memory is threadbare
and embroidery a necessary tool for remembering.
Might as well make it gold thread,
That old symbol always shiny.

Please, do not throw salt in my hair
I just finished picking out all the memories
Of paper cuts and broken wine glasses.

I have moved so far
you read me poems over the phone.
The breakwater of your voice
Reassuring and commemorative.
Candles help.

I broke her favorite wine flute,
Pastel, frosted, painted
She promised that she didn’t mind,
It was one of a kind, but she didn’t care.
Still I tried to glue it back together.
Futile child-games, misconceptions of the dying-games
Played by grown-ups and their consumptive livers.
She still can’t watch certain movies with me.
“Cali, this is weird…”

Ah the movies, the gills through which
Life can be filtered, ruined and sieved out
To its finest polluted particulates.
Ash in the jet stream, beers on the porch swing
And nobody here has ever heard of Tarkovsky.